“THESE were our heroes.” Olga Semelova sweeps the leaves from the memorial located in an otherwise neglected area of Prague’s Olsany cemetery. 

As a girl, she had been a member of the wartime resistance against fascism, and, for her, the inscriptions upon a modest communal grave are not just names but remembrances of living, breathing people whom she knew and worked alongside during the construction of socialism in post-war Czechoslovakia. Once they had rested in the National Memorial, under banners and spotlights, in a sweeping marble hall. 

After the counter-revolution of 1989, they were unceremoniously ejected, their grave slabs broken up and publicly vandalised, and their ashes reburied together in these far more modest surroundings. Even then, they were not safe as the monument has been targeted by right-wing and neofascist groups and has been repeatedly defaced and drenched with cannisters of blood-red paint. 

Such treatment is in stark contrast to the respect accorded to the tomb of Jan Syrovy, the prime minister who colluded in the implementation of the Munich agreement, which lies a few hundred yards away; or the new monument to the Nazi collaborator Emil Hacha, built across town in 2005 and increasingly accorded civic honours.

The past is being rewritten: with day becoming night, and night becoming day. The Vlasov divisions (Russian defectors who fought alongside Nazi Germany) are now hailed as the “true liberators” of Prague, in May 1945, as they scrambled westwards in an attempt to surrender to Patton’s advancing US army; while the “werewolf” bands of ultra-nationalists and fascists, who conducted a brutal terrorist campaign in the months after the war, are rehabilitated and celebrated to the detriment of the Czech and Slovak border guards who fell in the battles to defeat them. 

The European Union classifies the holding of private property as an inalienable “human right,” effectively criminalising nationalisation programmes by progressive governments, and provides legal sanctions that explicitly link communism to fascism, as the twin totalitarian evils that disfigured and dehumanised the continent’s history over the course of the 20th century.

It is against this background that the right-wing coalition government of Petr Fiala has drafted legislation designed to outlaw the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM). On May 30 2025, the Chamber of Deputies passed amendments to the country’s Criminal Code that sought to make “support and promotion of the communist movement” punishable with prison sentences of up to 10 years. If it is not rejected by the Senate and the Bill is subsequently signed into law by the president, the law will come into full force on January 1 2026.

Yet as Petra Proksanova, head of the Youth Committee of the KSCM and leader of the Stacilo (anti-capitalist and anti-cuts) movement in the upcoming elections, explains: “The law is written very vaguely and even those who submitted and approved it were unable to coherently explain what exactly the law will prohibit. 

“According to various interpretations, it could ban the display of communist symbols, such as the hammer and sickle, criminalise public events held by the communist movement, or even question the legality of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia.”

Taken to its logical extremes, attempts to provide a positive contextualisation of the literary and poetical works of Jaroslav Hasek and Jiri Wolker; to view a post-war canvas by Max Svabinsky; or to account for the heroism of the wartime resistance movement under Julius Fucik and Jan Sverma, could lead to prosecution. 

In this way, today’s liberal totalitarians would seem to be far more serious about waging a war upon culture and the construction of the past than their opponents among the mainstream of the European left.

However, Petra is far from dismayed and is fully aware of the stakes at play. “You have to understand,” she says, “that anti-communism has dominated the cultural, political, and intellectual life of the Czech Republic for the last 35 years. There have been serious attempts to ban the Communist Party in the past. The government even managed to enforce a ban on the communist Youth League, which was only lifted after long, difficult, but always principled grassroots struggles.”

“Despite all the constant political pressure, the KSCM is one of the most numerous political parties in our country, represented in elected bodies at the local level, in regional parliaments, and in the European Parliament. Today, it belongs to the core forces of the opposition, anti-government movement. It is clear that this projected law will be used against the most militant opponents of the current government — that is, the communists — in an attempt to silence them. 

“The KSCM is taking a very radical stance against the current anti-people government of Petr Fiala and its anti-social and warlike policies. We do not agree with its policies of social cuts and changes to the Labour Code that seek to destroy the rights of workers and to raise the retirement age. We are fighting for free public education and healthcare, as well as for the construction of public housing on a mass scale that would solve the endemic housing crisis, which bedevils the country.”

“In connection with international politics, we are striving for the Czech Republic to withdraw from the aggressive Nato military pact and for the citizens of our country to be able to decide in a referendum if they want to withdraw from the European Union. Set against this, a fresh surge in the anti-communist campaign is now taking place in a number of European countries.

“In a specifically Czech context, this new anti-communist attack is obviously related to the fact that after the defeat of the KSCM in the last parliamentary elections, the party rapidly rebuilt and was able to succeed — through its participation in the grassroots Stacilo movement, which it initiated — in the recent elections to the European Parliament and the regional parliaments across Bohemia and Moravia. Indeed, in terms of the regional governments, we tripled our number of representatives.”

“Now, we are preparing to repeat these successes in the parliamentary elections, which will take place in early October. In this light, it seems clear that the projected prohibitions are a blatant tactic by the current government in order to tarnish our name and stall our progress.”

“As a communist party, we take this latest legislative attack very seriously. For this reason, we are preparing for a complex legal battle. 

“At the same time, we are trying to mobilise the public against this anti-democratic campaign and explain why it is so important to stand together with the communists to defend the remnants of our democratic rights and freedoms. As already mentioned, the whole issue has a strong international resonance. 

“For this reason, we are trying to raise awareness of the current developments in our country across Europe and the progressive world. We greatly appreciate the solidarity that we have already received in this context, not only from communist and workers’ parties from all across the globe but also from a number of other organisations, movements, and individuals who care passionately about the situation.

“The future must not belong to the dark, reactionary forces that desperately cling to power and hoard wealth, but to those who represent a clear socialist alternative to the current situation based on exploitation, oppression, and war. We are, therefore, convinced that no amount of repression and persecution can ever silence us communists.”

The parallels with the 1930s and the betrayal of the Czech people to fascism by the Western liberal democracies are all too clear. But as the leaves blow away from the stones in the cemetery to reveal the triumphant inscriptions of the past, it is clear for both Olga Semelova and Petra Proksanova that socialism is both the hope and the beating heart of the future.

John Callow is a GMB officer writing in a personal capacity.